my new project

[John Stoner]

I have a new application I want to distribute under an open-source license.
I am sort of ambivalent about what license to choose. I like the openness
and permanence of the GPL, and the idea that others who wanted to use my
code would have to contribute back.

At the same time, it's clear that this is innovative more in concept than
implementation: it's a clever use of some things that preexist, but for
someone to come along and make a closed-source version from scratch would
not be a huge effort, or a huge surprise, for that matter. So I don't feel
particularly protective of my source code. BSD, GPL, it doesn't make much
difference to me at this point.

It's a project I call boogiepants. Boogiepants is at the intersection of
dance and experimental electronic music, like a videogame you play with your
pelvis.

It's a very visual thing. It defies description. Here's the best I can come
up with:

Imagine dancing on stage, with a Wiimote in a pocket, tight on your belly,
and the Nunchuk on your pelvis. The wiimote is connected to a computer, by
bluetooth. There is an image projected behind you, with an object that moves
the way your pelvis moves relative to your belly, called the stick. All
live, all real time.

There are other objects on the screen called instruments, and when the stick
touches the instruments, a musical event plays, perhaps a sample, or some
other sort of thing. And when you push buttons on the wiimote, it adds and
removes sets of instruments. The instruments move with the wiimote, so it's
actually driven by the motion of your pelvis relative to your belly.

So you can play music with your body as you dance, with a visual display to
help the audience see as well as hear, so they can make sense of and
understand what you're doing.

Ultimately, this will be a fully open-source project. Meaning not only will
the code be open sourced, but all patterns and all assembly instructions for
garments (the actual boogie pants) will be available on instructables.com.

My code is in a prototype stage. It's more of a proof-of-technology at this
point--'here's how you would implement this if you were to do so.' Proving
the concept is the next step. As such, I have cut some corners, which seems
entirely appropriate at this point.

One such corner: my code has a dependency on a closed-source library, a wii
remote driver for Java. The author of that library is ok with me
redistributing his object file, but is unwilling to make his source
available.

I can see why free-software advocates might find this upsetting, but I'd say
it's more upsetting at version 1.0 than at version 0.1. Of course, many
projects never make it to 1.0. But that doesn't seem like a reason to
reverse this compromise at this point.

The main benefit I can see of reversing this is that I could host on
Sourceforge or Google Code, which would be nice. And we'd all have an
open-source wii remote driver for Java. I even wrote some build code that
goes and downloads the closed-source jar from its origin. But now I'm
feeling funny about distributing that way.

At this point, I'm most interested in spending my time on adding function,
and working with end-users to stay focused on useful improvements. If this
project is to be successful, I need to focus on what interests me, and find
others to work on other pieces. I've already had delays, and the project is
more threatened by a loss of interest than anything else.

So, a few questions:

1. does anyone recommend a particular license? I'm more persuaded by
practical considerations than ideological ones. I like the GPL, but don't
have a strong commitment to a particular license.

2. As for my closed source dependency, am I missing anything in terms of how
I should prioritize resolving that dependency? It really is one of a number
of issues with my prototype.

-- 
blog:
http://www.generosity.org/stoner/
'In knowledge is power, in  wisdom, humility.'
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